Research Insights Day 2026: 3 years of the DFC
Join us for DFC Research Insights Day, a hybrid event building on the DFC’s research and collaborations. We will examine how rapidly changing technologies, policy, and practices are reshaping children’s experiences and rights in the digital environment.
Key tensions emerging from current research centre on artificial intelligence, protection and participation, access and exclusion, innovation and accountability, and individual responsibility and safer design. What can children’s lived experiences tell us about the digital environments being created for them? How can policy responses better address differences in children’s circumstances and vulnerabilities, and where should responsibility for creating better digital futures lie?
Bringing together researchers, policymakers, civil society, practitioners and young people, the event will connect new evidence with unfolding debates about regulation, design and children’s rights, while looking ahead to the priorities for research and action.
Lunch provided, with drinks reception after.
10:30 - 11:45: Children's experiences in digital classrooms
Speakers: Sandra El Gemayel (LSE); (5Rights); Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Sandra Leaton Gray (UCL), Lucy Street (5Rights)
Chair: Ellen Helsper
12:00 - 13:00: Age assurance: protecting children, preserving rights
Speakers: Steve Wood (PrivacyX Consulting); Iain Corby (Age Verification Providers Association), Jen Persson (Defend Digital Me), Ayca Atabay (Rights.AI Europe)
Chair: Lee Edwards (LSE)
14:00 - 15:00: Age-appropriate design for children: what should digital environments look like?
Speakers: Beckett LeClair (5Rights), Jun Zhao (University of Oxford), Ivelise Fortim (LSE) and Ricardo Horta (Brazil Ministry of Justice), Kim R. Sylwander (LSE)
Chair: Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne (QMUL)
15:00 - 16:00: Digital futures for children: what’s next?
Speakers: Colette Collins-Walsh (5Rights), Ellen Helsper (LSE), Cosima Wiltshire (UCL), Mhairi Aitken (Our AI Collective)
Chair: Sonia Livingstone (LSE)
LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.